The Evolution of Social Media based on App Annie’s report

Analytics platform App Annie has released another report on social media. It highlights the evolution of social media and shows their continued growth in importance, not only in the market, but in our lives – according to this platform, we spend almost half of our time on mobile devices.

App Annie – what is it?

App Annie is one of the most trusted mobile data and analytics platforms in the industry. As App Annie itself states, its mission is to help its customers create winning mobile experiences and achieve excellence. The company was founded in 2010. It was the first to market a mobile data solution.

Two years ago, App Annie bought the Libring platform, an ad monetization and digital spend bidding opportunity. What App Annie boasts, min. on his LinkedIn profile, is that together these solutions provide the most complete platform in the mobile industry. The company has more than 1,100 enterprise customers and one million registered users across all geographies and industries. Because of this, App Annie is able to grow its business and conduct a variety of app market analysis. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has 12 offices around the world.

Platform Report

App Annie has produced a report called: “The Evolution of Social Media Apps”. Live Streaming: The New Frontier for Social Media”. In Polish, this can be translated as: The evolution of social media applications. Live streaming a new frontier for Social Media. Of interest is the word frontier, which can be understood in multiple ways depending on the context. Although here it clearly refers to the borderline of two worlds. The first is old media, or staid content. The second is the already refreshed, new media based on audiovisual broadcasts broadcast directly in real time.

Document issues

App Annie tries to answer the following questions with the report:

1. What is the scale of the mobile social media market?
2. The rise of live streaming – how streamers are driving growth?
3. How the social landscape has evolved through the markets?
4. How consumers’ favorite apps have changed over time?
5. How the maker economy is crucial to social development?

The State of Social Media – Scaling

App Annie reports indicates that the rate of cumulative downloads of social media apps by Q2. 2021 was up to 74 billion. In the first half of 2021 alone, those downloads totaled just under 5 billion. Relative to consumer spending, that has totaled $22.2 billion so far. App Annie proves that these will grow – $3.2 billion in the first two quarters of this year alone, which saw an increase of half on an annualized basis.

Time is money!

It turns out that social apps are the beneficiaries of up to 740 billion hours of time spent on mobile devices. This figure refers to the first half of the year, which represents 44% of the time spent on all mobile devices worldwide!

Time spent on social apps has maintained steady growth over the past 3 years. In the first half of this year, a noticeable 30 percent. growth compared to the first half of 2018.

Streaming is growing in popularity

Data reports that the total time spent on the top 5 social media apps with live streaming capabilities has exceeded half a billion hours on Android phones alone. This result did not include China in 2021. Three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) scores 25 percent. compared to 15 percent of. For chat and audiovisual applications.

Live streaming is driving growth in social app engagement, according to report. This amplifies consumer spending and prepares them for more within these apps.

SoMe app evolution

Chart for the first half. 2021 shows that photo video apps accounted for less than 5 percent of the consumer spending market, compared to 8 percent. of 2018. Share of live streaming apps up 24.24 percentage points over three years. to 76.24 percent. in the first half of 2021. Chat apps, on the other hand, ranked at 18.81 percent, down 21.19 percentage points. on a three-year basis.

Video has stood at the forefront of the evolving market and social landscape. Live streaming capabilities are expected to fuel this growth rate even further. TikTok is clearly coming to the forefront in the countries of the so-called. West. This can be seen in the US and UK, where the ratio of hours spent per month in the app per user is higher for Tik Tok than YouTube. The latter player, meanwhile, is outperforming the medium in countries such as Japan and South Korea, where it is 2.5 times the size of the Chinese platform.

Creator economics a way to make more money online?

Currently, a large proportion of social media applications include the possibility to make purchases within them. In the past, however, this has only focused on one-off transactions. The report hints at products such as a bundle of distinctive stickers being purchased for businesses. Today we can see a trend related to giving gifts to creators. This is a brilliant move on the part of the apps. This way, they encourage creators to create and activate users to make payments without lifting a finger. This is especially evident in live streaming.

On Twitch we are dealing with “Bits”. These are digital gifts that viewers of a particular creator can purchase for their idol, thus offering them a form of support and patronage. We can also see the growth of paid subscriptions, which offer content not available to those who don’t pay a fee, creating a kind of exclusivity of content, or satisfying the need for belonging and recognition. Viewers gain access to additional options such as custom emoticons and subscriber badges. W Bigo Live we can see beans, and in TikTok virtual coins, Which are currency for virtual gifts to streamers. Developers can exchange the gifts they receive for real money, which further motivates them to show gratitude to users and drives them to stream.

App Annie finds that by 2025, spending on social media apps will be $78 billion!

Overall, it comes out that social media apps could grow to $60.3 billion over the next four years. The result is expected to be supported by $17.7 billion in spending on content creators and streamers operating from social apps. The report thus marks an increase of almost 30 percent. at a five-year CAGR for this segment.